Supply Chain Social and Environmental Responsibility Introduction

As the world's largest information technology (IT) company, HP has the industry's most extensive supply chain. We take the challenge of raising standards in our supply chain seriously. HP acts as a force to improve lives in the communities where we work and we expect our suppliers to make the same commitment. Our priorities include protecting workers’ rights, dignity and respect, raising health and safety standards, minimizing the environmental impact of producing and distributing our products, and upholding the highest standards of business ethics. Since we launched our Social and Environmental Responsibility Program in 2000 with product materials, components, and manufacturing and distribution services suppliers, we have made ourselves accountable for these suppliers’ SER performance, built a commitment to SER among this supplier base and begun to tackle the toughest challenges in the supply chain. Our experience has shown that improving supply chain SER performance requires sustained commitment.

In 2003, HP was the first electronics company to publish a Social and Environmental Responsibility Supplier Code of Conduct. In 2004, we helped lead the development of the Electronic Industry Code of Conduct (EICC), the standard we now apply. The EICC fosters responsible management and operational practices in labor, human rights, ethics, the environment, health and safety across the electronics industry's global supply chain.

We are also working closely with our product materials, components, and manufacturing and distribution services suppliers to quantify the energy they consume in manufacturing our products and associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that contribute to climate change. We have launched a program to work with suppliers to report energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and to establish expectations with our suppliers regarding energy efficiency. In 2008, we requested first tier suppliers representing more than 80 percent of our total product manufacturing spend to report company GHG emissions. HP became the first major IT company to publish aggregated supply chain GHG emissions (3.5 million tonnes carbon dioxide equivalent in 2007—more than twice HP’s emissions from operations), a significant step toward greater transparency and accountability. In 2009, HP is working with our tier one suppliers to approach their suppliers in a similar way. For more on our efforts, see Climate and energy in the 2008 Global Citizenship Report.

In 2009, HP expanded our SER Program to our indirect supply base (those suppliers providing goods and services that are not used to produce our electronic products). This part of the program operates under the same principles, but, uses different applicability rules in certain circumstances.